LINCOLN  ROOM 


UNIVERSITY  OF  ILLINOIS 
LIBRARY 


MEMORIAL 

the  Class  of  1901 

founded  by 

HARLAN  HOYT  HORNER 

and 

HENRIETTA  CALHOUN  HORNER 


.^ac 


t^t^^.  /^^  ^ 


ADDRESS 

Delivered  before  a  Joint  Convention  of  the  Senate  and  House 

OF  Representatives  of  the 

GENERAL   COURT   OF   MASSACHUSETTS, 

on  Friday,  February  12,  1909, 

BY   THE 

Hon.  Henry  Cabot  Lodge, 

ON   THE 

Occasion  of  the  One-hundredth  Anniversary  of  the  Birth  of 

ABRAHAM    LINCOLN. 


BOSTON,    MASS. 
1909. 


Boston: 
Wright  &  Potter  Printing  Co.,  18  Post  Office  Square. 


ADDRESS. 


Mr.  President,  Mr.  Speaker,  Your  Excellency,  Sen- 
ators AND  Gentlemen  of  the  House  of  Representa- 
tives:—  By  your  kind  request  I  am  here.  An  invitation 
from  you  is  to  me  a  command  which  it  is  at  once  an 
honor  and  a  pleasure  to  obey.  But  in  thus  honoring  me 
you  have  suddenly  imposed  upon  me  a  duty  which  it  is 
not  easy  worthily  to  fulfill.  You  have  asked  me  to  address 
you  upon  this,  the  one  hundredth  anniversary  of  the  birth 
of  Abraham  Lincoln;  to  express  for  you  and  to  you  some 
of  the  thoughts  which  ought  to  find  utterance  when,  on 
the  completion  of  the  century,  we  seek  to  pay  fit  homage 
to  the  memory  of  that  great  man. 

I  know  not  how  it  may  be  with  the  many  others  who,  in 
these  days  of  commemoration,  will  speak  of  Lincoln,  but  to 
me  the  dominant  feeling,  as  I  approach  my  subject,  is  a 
sense  of  helplessness,  and  a  sharp  realization  of  the  im- 
possibility of  doing  justice  to  such  an  occasion.  To  attempt 
here  a  review  of  his  life  would  be  labor  lost.  Ten  stately 
volumes    by    those   who    lived    in    closest    communion    with 


ABRAHAM    LINCOLN. 


him,  and  who  knew  him  best,  were  not  more  than  ade- 
quate to  tell  fitly  the  story  of  his  life.  That  story  too, 
in  varying  form,  is  known  to  all  the  people,  "familiar  in 
their  mouths  as  household  words."  From  the  early  days 
of  dire  poverty,  from  the  log  cabin  of  the  shiftless  pioneer, 
ever  moving  forward  in  search  of  a  fortune  which  never 
came,  from  the  picture  of  the  boy  working  his  sums  or 
reading  his  Bible  and  his  Milton  by  the  red  light  of  the 
fire,  the  marvelous  tale  goes  onward  and  upward  to  the 
solemn  scene  of  the  second  inaugural,  and  to  the  burial  of 
the  great  chief  amid  the  lamentations  of  a  nation.  We 
know  it  all,  and  the  story  is  one  of  the  great  treasures  of 
the  American  people. 

Still  more  impossible  would  it  be  in  a  brief  moment  here 
to  draw,  even  in  the  barest  outline,  a  sketch  of  the  events 
in  which  his  was  the  commanding  presence,  for  that  would  be 
to  write  the  history  of  the  United  States  during  the  most 
crowded  and  most  terrible  years  of  our  existence  as  a 
nation.  Yet  if  Lincoln's  life  and  deeds,  by  their  very  mag- 
nitude, thus  exclude  us  from  any  attempt  even  to  enumer- 
ate them,  there  is,  nevertheless,  something  still  better  which 
we  can  do  upon  this  day,  forever  made  memorable  by  his 
birth.  We  can  render  to  him  what  I  venture  to  think  is 
the  truest  homage,  that  which  I  believe  he  would  prize 
most,  and  compared  to  which  any  other  is  little  more  than 


ABRAHAM    LINCOLN.  5 


lip  service.  We  can  pause  to-day  in  the  hurry  of  daily  life 
and  contemplate  that  great,  lonely,  tragic  figure,  that  im- 
agination with  its  touch  of  the  poet,  that  keen,  strong 
mind  with  its  humor  and  its  pathos,  that  splendid  common 
sense  and  pure  character,  and  then  learn  from  the  life 
which  the  possessor  of  all  these  qualities  lived,  and  from 
the  deeds  which  he  did,  lessons  which  may  not  be  without 
value  to  each  one  of  us  in  our  own  lives,  in  teaching  us 
the  service  which  we  should  render  to  our  country.  Let  me 
express  my  meaning,  with  slight  variation,  in  his  own  im- 
mortal words:  — 

The  world  will  little  note,  nor  long  remember,  what  we  say  here,  but  it  can 
never  forget  what  he  did  here.  It  is  for  us,  the  living,  rather,  to  be  dedicated 
here  to  the  unfinished  work  which  he  who  fought  here  has  thus  far  so  nobly 
advanced. 

In  this  spirit  I  am  about  to  suggest  a  few  thoughts 
among  the  many  which  have  come  to  me  as  1  have  medi- 
tated upon  the  life  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  and  upon  what, 
with  that  great  theme  before  me,  1  should  say  to  you  to-day. 

I  desire  first,  if  I  can,  to  take  you  back  for  a  moment  to 
the  living  man,  and  thereby  show  you  what  some  of  his 
trials  were  and  how  he  met  them,  for  in  doing  so  I  believe 
we  can  learn  better  how  to  deal  with  our  own  problems. 
I  think,  too,  that  if  we  thus  look  upon  him  with  consid- 
erate eyes,   we  shall   be  inspired   to  seek,   in   public  affairs. 


ABRAHAM    LINCOLN. 


for  more  charitable  and  better  instructed  judgments  upon 
public  men  and  public  events  than  are  common  now.  We 
are  apt,  unconsciously  and  almost  inevitably,  to  confuse  in 
our  minds  the  Lincoln  of  to-day,  the  Lincoln  of  history, 
as  he  dwells  in  our  hearts  and  our  imaginations,  with  the 
actual  man  who  was  President  of  the  United  States  in  the 
dark  days  of  the  civil  war,  and  who  struggled  forward  amid 
difficulties  greater,  almost,  than  any  ever  encountered  by  a 
leader  of  men. 

Mankind  has  never  lost  its  capacity  for  weaving  myths 
or  its  inborn  love  for  them.  This  faculty,  or  rather  this 
innate  need  of  human  nature,  is  apparent  in  the  earliest 
pages  of  human  history.  The  beautiful  and  tragic  myths, 
born  of  the  Greek  imagination,  which  have  inspired  poets 
and  dramatists  for  three  thousand  years,  come  to  us  out  of 
the  dim  past  with  the  light  of  a  roseate  dawn  upon  them. 
They  come  to  us  alike  in  the  great  verse  of  Homer  and 
veiled  in  the  gray  mists  of  the  north,  where  we  descry  the 
shadows  of  fighting  men  and  hear  the  clash  of  swords  and 
the  wild  screams  of  the  Valkyries.  The  leaders  of  tribes, 
the  founders  of  States,  the  eponymous  and  autochthonous 
heroes  in  the  infancy  of  civilization  were  all  endowed  by 
the  popular  imagination  with  a  divine  descent  and  a  near 
kinship  to  the  gods.  We  do  not  give  our  heroes  godlike 
ancestors,    although    I    have   seen    a   book   which   traces   the 


ABRAHAM    LINCOLN. 


pedigree  of  Washington  to  Odin,  but  when  they  are  great 
enough  we  transmute  the  story  of  their  Hves  into  a  myth, 
just  hke  the  Greeks  and  the  Norsemen.  Do  not  imagine 
from  this  that  I  am  about  to  tell  you  of  the  "real"  or  the 
"true"  Lincoln.  Nothing  would  be  more  alien  to  my  pur- 
pose, or  more  distasteful,  for  I  have  observed  that,  as  a 
rule,  when  these  words  are  prefixed  to  the  subject  of  a  bi- 
ography it  usually  means  that  we  have  spread  before  us  a 
collection  of  petty  details  and  unworthy  gossip  which  pre- 
.-.ents  an  utterly  distorted  view  of  a  great  man,  which  is,  in 
>abstance,  entirely  false,  and  which  gratifies  only  those 
envious  minds  which  like  to  see  superiority  brought  down 
to  their  own  level.  Such  presentations  are  as  ignoble  and 
base  as  the  popular  myth,  however  erroneous,  is  loving  and 
beautiful,  —  a  manifestation  of  that  noble  quality  in  human 
nature  which  Carlyle  has  described  in  his  "Hero  Worship." 
I  wish  merely  to  detach  Lincoln  from  the  myth,  which  has 
possession  of  us  all,  that  his  wisdom,  his  purity  and  his 
greatness  were  as  obvious  and  acknowledged,  or  ought  to 
;ave  been  as  obvious  and  acknowledged,  in  his  lifetime  as 
they  are  to-day.  We  have  this  same  feeling  about  the  one 
.nan  in  American  history  who  stands  beside  Lincoln  in  un- 
challenged equality  of  greatness.  Washington,  indeed,  is  so 
far  removed  that  we  have  lost  our  conception  of  the  fact 
that  he  was  bitterly  criticized,  that  he  struggled  with  many 


8  ABRAHAM    LINCOLN. 


difficulties,  and  that  his  words,  which  to  us  have  an  al- 
most sacred  significance,  were,  when  they  were  uttered, 
treated  by  some  persons  then  extant  with  contempt.  Let 
me  give  you  an  idea  of  what  certain  people,  now  quite  for- 
gotten, thought  of  Washington  when  he  went  out  of  office. 
On  the  6th  of  March,  1797,  the  leading  newspaper  of  the 
opposition  spoke  as  follows:  — 

"  Lord,  now  lettest  Thou  Thy  servant  depart  in  peace"  was  the  pious  ejacu- 
lation of  a  pious  man  who  beheld  a  flood  of  happiness  rushing  in  upon  man- 
kind. If  ever  there  was  a  time  that  would  license  the  reiteration  of  the  ejacu- 
lation, that  time  has  now  arrived,  for  the  man  who  is  the  source  of  all  the 
misfortunes  of  our  country  is  this  day  reduced  to  a  level  with  his  fellow-citizens, 
and  is  no  longer  possessed  of  power  to  multiply  evils  upon  the  United  States. 
If  ever  there  was  a  period  for  rejoicing,  this  is  the  moment.  Every  heart  in 
unison  with  the  freedom  and  happiness  of  the  people  ought  to  beat  high  with 
exultation  that  the  name  of  Washington  ceases  from  this  day  to  give  currency 
to  political  insults  and  to  legalized  corruption.  A  new  era  is  now  opening 
upon  us,  —  an  era  which  promises  much  to  the  people,  for  public  measures 
must  now  stand  upon  their  own  merits,  and  nefarious  projects  can  no  longer 
be  supported  by  a  name.  When  a  retrospect  has  been  taken  of  the  Wash- 
ington administration  for  eight  years  it  is  a  subject  of  the  greatest  astonish- 
ment that  a  single  individual  should  have  cankered  the  principles  of  Repub- 
licanism in  an  enlightened  people  just  emerging  from  the  gulf  of  despotism, 
and  should  have  carried  his  designs  against  the  public  liberty  so  far  as  to  have 
put  in  jeopardy  its  very  existence.  Such,  however,  are  the  facts,  and  with 
these  staring  us  in  the  face,  the  day  ought  to  be  a  jubilee  in  the  United  States. 

How  Strange  and  unreal  this  sounds  to  us  who  know  not 
merely  that  George  Washington  led  the  army  of  the 
United    States    to    victory,    but    that    his    administration    es- 


ABRAHAM    LINCOLN. 


tablished  our  Union  and  our  government,  which  Lincoln, 
leading  the  American  people,  was  destined  to  preserve.  The 
myth  has  grown  so  powerful  that  it  is  hard  to  compre- 
hend that  actual  living  men  were  uttering  words  like  these 
about  George  Washington. 

The  same  feeling  in  regard  to  Lincoln  began  to  take 
form  even  earlier  than  in  the  case  of  Washington.  The 
manner  of  his  death  made  men  see,  as  by  a  flash  of  light- 
ning, what  he  was  and  what  he  had  done,  even  before  the 
grave  closed  over  him.  Nothing  illustrates  the  violent  re- 
vulsion of  sentiment  which  then  occurred  better  than  the 
verses  which  appeared  in  "Punch"  when  the  news  of  his 
death  reached  England.  He  had  been  jeered  at,  abused, 
vilified  and  caricatured  in  England  to  a  degree  which  can 
be  understood  only  by  those  who  lived  through  that  time, 
or  who  have  turned  over  the  newspapers  and  magazines,  or 
read  the  memoirs  and  diaries  of  that  epoch.  In  this  chorus 
of  abuse  "Punch"  had  not  lagged  behind.  Then  came  the 
assassination,  and  then  these  verses  by  Tom  Taylor,  written 
to  accompany  Tenniel's  cartoon  representing  England  lay- 
ing a  wreath  on  Lincoln's  bier:  — 

Beside  this  corpse,  that  bears  for  winding  sheet 
The  Stars  and  Stripes  he  lived  to  rear  anew. 

Between  the  mourners  at  his  head  and  feet, 
Say,  scurril  jester,  is  there  room  for  you  ? 


lO  ABRAHAM    LINCOLN. 


Yes,  he  had  lived  to  shame  me  from  my  sneer, 

To  lame  my  pencil  and  confute  my  pen; 
To  make  me  own  this  hind  of  princes  peer, 

This  rail-splitter  a  true  born  king  of  men. 

How,  at  a  glance,  we  see  not  only  the  greatness  and  no- 
bility of  the  man,  forcing  themselves  upon  the  minds  of 
men  abroad  as  at  home,  but  how  keenly  these  remorseful 
verses  make  us  realize  the  storm  of  abuse,  of  criticism  and 
defamation  through  which  he  had  passed  to  victory. 

From  that  day  to  this  the  tide  of  feeling  has  swept  on, 
until,  with  Lincoln  as  with  Washington,  we  have  become 
unable,  without  a  serious  effort,  to  realize  the  attacks 
which  he  met,  the  assaults  which  were  made  upon  him  or 
the  sore  trials  which  he  had  to  endure.  I  would  fain  show 
you  how  the  actual  man,  living  in  those  terrible  years,  met 
one  or  two  of  the  attacks. 

Lincoln  believed  that  the  first  step  toward  the  salvation 
of  the  Union  was  to  limit  the  area  of  secession.  He 
wished  above  all  things,  therefore,  to  hold  in  the  Union  the 
border  States,  as  they  were  then  called.  If  those  States 
were  added  to  the  Confederacy  the  chances  of  saving  the 
Union  would  have  been  seriously  diminished.  In  those  same 
States  there  was  a  strong  Union  feeling  and  a  very  weak 
antislavery  feeling.  If  they  could  be  convinced  that  the 
controlling  purpose  of  the  war  was   to  preserve  the   Union 


ABRAHAM    LINCOLN.  II 


the  chances  were  that  they  could  be  held,  but  if  they  were 
made  to  believe  that  the  real  object  of  the  war  was  the 
abolition  of  slavery  they  would  probably  have  been  lost. 
Lincoln,  therefore,  had  checked  Fremont  in  issuing  orders 
for  the  liberation  of  the  slaves,  and  in  the  first  year  of  the 
war  had  done  nothing  in  that  direction,  for  reasons  which 
seemed  to  him  good,  and  which,  to  all  men  to-day,  appear 
profoundly  wise.  Abolitionists  and  extreme  antislavery  men 
everywhere  were  bitterly  disappointed,  and  a  flood  of  criti- 
cism was  let  loose  upon  him  for  his  attitude  in  this  matter, 
while  at  the  same  time  he  was  also  abused  by  reactionaries 
and  by  the  opposition  as  a  "  radical  "  and  "  black  republican." 
Horace  Greeley,  an  able  editor  and  an  honest  man,  devoted 
to  the  cause  of  the  Union,  but  a  lifelong  and  ardent  oppo- 
nent of  slavery,  assailed  the  President  in  the  New  York 
"Tribune."     Here  is  Lincoln's  reply:  — 

Executive  Mansion, 
Washington,  Aug.  22,  1862. 

As  to  the  policy  I  "  seem  to  be  pursuing,"  as  you  say,  I  have  not  meant  to 
leave  any  one  in  doubt. 

1  would  save  the  Union.  I  would  save  it  the  shortest  way  under  the  Con- 
stitution. The  sooner  the  national  authority  can  be  restored,  the  nearer  the 
Union  will  be  "  the  Union  as  it  was."  If  there  be  those  who  would  not  save 
the  Union  unless  they  could  at  the  same  time  save  slavery,  I  do  not  agree 
with  them.  If  there  be  those  who  would  not  save  the  Union  unless  they  could 
at  the  same  time  destroy  slavery,  I  do  not  agree  with  them.  My  paramount 
object  in  this  struggle  is  to  save  the  Union,  and  is  not  either  to  save  or  to  de- 


UBRARY 

WUVERSITY  OF  ILLINOIS 


12  ABRAHAM    LINCOLN. 


stroy  slavery.  If  I  could  save  the  Union  without  freeing  any  slave  I  would 
do  it;  and  if  I  could  save  it  by  freeing  all  the  slaves  I  would  do  it;  and  if  I 
could  save  it  by  freeing  some  and  leaving  others  alone  I  would  also  do  that. 
What  I  do  about  slavery  and  the  colored  race  I  do  because  I  believe  it  helps 
to  save  the  Union;  and  what  I  forbear,  I  forbear  because  I  do  not  believe  it 
would  help  to  save  the  Union.  I  shall  do  less  whenever  I  shall  believe  that 
what  I  am  doing  hurts  the  cause,  and  I  shall  do  more  whenever  I  believe  doing 
more  will  help  the  cause.  I  shall  try  to  correct  errors  when  shown  to  be  errors, 
and  I  shall  adopt  new  views  so  fast  as  they  shall  appear  to  be  true  views. 

I  have  here  stated  my  purpose  according  to  my  view  of  official  duty;  and 
I  intend  no  modification  of  my  oft-expressed  personal  wish  that  all  men  every- 
where could  be  free. 

What  a  reply  that  is!  Using  his  unrivalled  power  of 
statement  he  sets  forth  his  policy  with  a  force  which  drives 
opposition  helpless  before  it  and  renders  retort  impossible. 
He  strips  the  issue  bare  of  every  irrelevant  consideration 
and  makes  it  so  plain  that  no  one  can  mistake  it. 

This  was  a  case  of  specific  criticism.  There  were  others  of 
a  more  general  nature.  A  few  months  after  Greeley  wrote, 
Mr.  Lincoln  received  a  letter  from  Mr.  Carl  Schurz.  Mr. 
Schurz,  who  has  been  a  familiar  figure  to  the  present  gen- 
eration, was  an  able  man  and  a  very  eloquent  and  effective 
speaker,  especially  upon  economic  subjects.  He  was  also 
fond  of  criticising  other  people  who  were  doing  work  for 
which  they  were  responsible  and  not  he.  His  system  of 
criticism  was  a  simple  one.  He  would  depict  an  ideal  Pres- 
ident, or  Cabinet   officer,   or   Senator;   put   him   in   an   ideal 


ABRAHAM    LINCOLN.  I3 


situation,  surrounded  by  conditions  as  they  ought  to  be, 
and  with  this  imaginary  person  he  would  then  contrast, 
most  unfavorably,  the  actual  man  who  was  trying  to  get 
results  out  of  conditions  which  were  not  at  all  as  they 
ought  to  be,  but  which,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  actually  ex- 
isted. This  method  of  discussion,  of  course,  presented  Mr. 
Schurz  in  a  very  admirable  light,  and  gave  him  a  great 
reputation,  especially  with  people  who  had  never  been 
called  upon  to  bear  any  public  responsibility  at  all.  When 
Mr.  Schurz  was  in  the  Cabinet  himself  he  fell  easily  into 
the  class  which  he  criticized,  and,  naturally,  bore  no  rela- 
tion to  the  ideal  by  which  he  tried  other  people,  but  that 
fact  never  altered  the  opinion  of  his  greatness  entertained 
by  his  admirers.  They  liked  to  hear  him  find  fault  point- 
edly and  eloquently  with  their  contemporaries,  but  they 
forgot  or  overlooked  the  fact  that  in  the  past  he  had  ap- 
plied his  system  to  Lincoln,  and  in  that  connection  the 
process  seems  less  convincing.  Here  is  Lincoln's  reply  to 
Mr.  Schurz's  criticism:  — 

Washington,  Nov.  24,  1862. 

My  Dear  Sir: — I  have  just  received  and  read  your  letter  of  the  20th. 
The  purport  of  it  is  that  we  lost  the  late  elections  and  the  administration  is 
failing  because  the  war  is  unsuccessful,  and  that  I  must  not  flatter  myself 
that  I  am  not  justly  to  blame  for  it.  I  certainly  know  that,  if  the  war  fails, 
the  administration  fails,  and  that  I  will  be  blamed  for  it,  whether  I  deserve 
it  or  not.     And  I  ought  to  be  blamed,  if  I  could  do  better.     You  think  I  could 


14  ABRAHAM    LINCOLN. 


do  better;  therefore  you  blame  me  already.  I  think  I  could  not  do  better; 
therefore  1  blame  you  for  blaming  me.  I  understand  you  now  to  be  willing 
to  accept  the  help  of  men  who  are  not  Republicans,  provided  they  have 
"  heart  in  it."  Agreed.  I  want  no  others.  But  who  is  to  be  the  judge  of 
hearts,  or  of  "heart  in  it?"  If  I  must  discard  my  own  judgment  and  take 
yours,  1  must  also  take  that  of  others;  and  by  the  time  I  should  reject  all  I 
should  be  advised  to  reject,  I  should  have  none  left,  Republicans  or  others,  — 
not  even  yourself.  For  be  assured,  my  dear  sir,  there  are  men  who  have  "  heart 
in  it"  that  think  you  are  performing  your  part  as  poorly  as  you  think  1  am 
performing  mine. 

In  these  two  letters  which  I  have  quoted  He  great  les- 
sons. There  is  not  a  man  to-day,  whose  judgment  would 
be  of  any  value,  who  does  not  know  that  Lincoln,  in  these 
instances,  was  absolutely  right,  and  his  critics  hopelessly 
and  ignorantly  wrong.  They  teach  us  that  a  great  execu- 
tive officer,  dealing  with  the  most  momentous  problems, 
cannot  do  everything  at  once;  that  he  must  subordinate 
the  lesser  to  the  greater  if  he  would  not  fail  entirely;  that 
he  must  do  the  best  he  can,  and  not  lose  all  by  striving 
vainly  for  the  ideally  best.  He  must  steer,  also,  between 
the  radical  extremists  on  the  one  side  and  the  reactionary 
extremists  on  the  other,  —  no  easy  task,  and  one  which 
Lincoln  performed  with  a  perfection  rarely  seen  among 
men.  Lincoln  could  have  said,  with  absolute  truth,  as 
Seneca's  Pilot  says,  in  Montaigne's  paraphrase:  — 

Oh,  Neptune,  thou  mayest  save  me  if  thou  wilt;    thou  mayest  sink  me  if 
thou  wilt;   but  whatever  may  befall  I  shall  hold  my  tiller  true. 


ABRAHAM    LINCOLN.  1 5 


As  we  look  at  this  correspondence  and  see  how  Lincoln 
was  criticized  by  able  men  on  a  point  where  the  judgment 
of  events  and  of  history  alike  has  gone  wholly  in  his  favor, 
is  it  not  well  for  us,  before  passing  hasty  judgment  and  in- 
dulging in  quick  condemnation,  to  reflect  that  the  men 
charged  with  great  public  duties  may  have  a  knowledge  of 
conditions  and  possess  sources  of  information  which  are  not 
known  to  the  world,  or  even  to  those  who  criticize?  Both 
for  men  in  public  life,  and  for  those  who  criticize  these 
men,  I  think  this  correspondence  contains  many  lessons  in 
conduct  and  character  which,  if  taken  to  heart,  will  make 
the  public  service  better  and  the  judgment  of  the  onlooker 
less  hasty. 

This  thought  and  the  admonition  which  these  glimpses  of 
the  past  bring  to  us  have  been  put  into  noble  verse  by  a 
poet  of  our  own  day,  and  it  is  to  the  poet  that  we  must 
always  turn  for  the  best  expression  of  what  we  try  to  say 
with  the  faltering  words  of  prose. 

A  flying  word  from  here  and  there, 

Had  sown  the  name  at  which  we  sneered, 
But  soon  the  name  was  everywhere. 

To  be  reviled  and  then  revered: 
A  presence  to  be  loved  and  feared, 

We  cannot  hide  it  or  deny 
That  we,  the  gentlemen  who  jeered, 

May  be  forgotten  by  and  by. 


1 6  ABRAHAM    LINCOLN. 


Consider,  also,  the  result.  Lincoln's  paramount  purpose 
was  to  save  the  Union,  and  he  saved  it.  His  critics 
thought  he  was  sacrificing  the  antislavery  cause.  He  thought 
otherwise,  and  he  was  right.  At  the  accepted  time  he 
emancipated  the  slaves  and  signed  the  death  warrant  of 
human  slavery.  Had  he  struck  at  the  wrong  moment  he 
might  have  ruined  the  Union  cause  and  thereby  left  the 
slaves  in  bondage.  He  was  a  great  statesman,  and  he 
knew  all  the  conditions,  not  merely  a  part  of  them.  He 
therefore  succeeded  where  his  critics  would  have  failed. 

Turn  now  from  the  difficulties  and  the  criticisms  with 
which  Lincoln  contended  upon  his  own  side,  and  which  sur- 
rounded him  like  a  network,  through  which  he  had  to  cut 
or  break  his  way  as  best  he  might,  and  look  with  me  for 
a  moment  at  the  force  with  which  he  was  doing  battle, 
and  see  whether  we  can  also  find  a  lesson  there.  Lincoln's 
purpose  was  to  save  the  Union;  the  object  of  those  with 
whom  he  fought  was  to  destroy  it.  I  am  not  going  to 
waste  time  upon  that  emptiest  of  all  questions,  whether 
the  States  had  the  right,  under  the  Constitution,  to  secede. 
The  purpose  of  the  Constitution,  if  it  had  meaning  or  pur- 
pose, was  to  make  a  nation  out  of  jarring  States,  and  that 
it  had  succeeded  in  doing  so  was  stated  by  Webster,  once 
and  for  all,  when  he  replied  to  Hayne  in  the  greatest 
speech    ever   made   in    the   Senate.     Secession   was    the   de- 


ABRAHAM    LINCOLN.  1 7 


struction  of  the  Union,  whether  the  Constitution  provided 
for  such  a  contradiction  as  the  right  of  secession  or  not. 
Secession  was  revolution,  and  revolution  is  not  to  be  stopped 
or  to  be  provided  for  by  paper  constitutions.  This  par- 
ticular revolution,  however,  found  its  reason  and  its  excuse 
in  the  doctrine  of  State  rights.  Under  cover  of  maintain- 
ing the  rights  of  States  the  Union  was  to  be  destroyed.  On 
this  issue  the  war  was  fought  out.  The  Union  was  victo- 
rious, and  the  rights  of  States  emerged  from  the  conflict 
beaten  and  discredited.  The  result  brought  with  it  a  new 
danger  in  the  direction  of  a  disproportionate  growth  in  the 
power  of  the  central  government,  and  this  peril  the  fa- 
natics of  State  rights,  and  no  one  else,  had  brought  upon 
themselves  and  upon  the  country.  In  the  first  public 
speech  which  I  ever  delivered,  some  thirty  years  ago,  alas, 
I  said :  — 

.  .  .  The  principle  of  State  rights  is  as  vital  and  essential  as  the  national 
principle  itself.  If  the  former,  carried  to  extremes,  means  anarchy,  the  latter, 
carried  to  like  extremes,  means  centralization  and  despotism.  .  .  . 

Two  lessons  are  clearly  written  on  the  pages  which  record  the  strife  between 
the  inborn  love  of  local  independence  and  the  broader  spirit  of  nationality 
created  by  the  Constitution.  One  is  reverence  for  the  Constitution;  the  other, 
a  careful  maintenance  of  the  principle  of  State  rights. 

To  these  general  views  I  have  always  adhered,  and  I  re- 
peat them  now  because  I  do  not  wish  to  be  misunderstood 
in  what  I  am  about  to  say  in  regard  to  State  rights  at  the 


1 8  ABRAHAM    LINCOLN. 

present  time.  The  subject  is  one  of  deep  importance  and 
ought  never  to  be  neglected.  The  growth  in  power  of  the 
central  government  is  inevitable,  because  it  goes  hand  in 
hand  with  the  growth  of  the  country.  There  is  no  danger 
that  this  movement  will  be  too  slow;  there  is  danger  that 
it  will  be  too  rapid  and  too  extensive.  The  strength  of 
our  American  system  resides  in  the  fact  that  we  have  a 
Union  of  States,  that  we  are  neither  a  weak  and  chaotic 
confederation,  nor  one  highly  centralized  government.  It  is 
of  the  highest  importance  that  the  States  should  be  main- 
tained in  all  their  proper  rights  and  the  Constitution  scru- 
pulously observed,  but  when  the  Constitution  is  thrust  for- 
ward every  day,  on  every  occasion,  serious  and  trivial 
alike,  whether  applicable  or  inapplicable,  and  for  mere  pur- 
poses of  obstruction,  the  government  of  the  Union  is  not 
injured,  but  the  Constitution  is  brought  into  contempt,  and 
the  profound  respect  which  we  all  should  feel  for  that 
great  instrument  is  impaired.  In  the  same  way  the  rights 
of  the  States,  the  true  rights,  are  again  in  danger  at  this 
time,  not  from  those  who  would  trench  upon  them,  but 
from  those  who  abuse  them,  as  did  the  advocates  of  seces- 
sion. Nothing  can  accelerate  the  growth  of  the  national 
power  to  an  unwholesome  degree  so  much  as  the  failure  of 
the  States,  from  local  or  selfish  motives,  to  do  their  part  in 
the   promotion    of   measures   which    the   good   of   the   whole 


ABRAHAM    LINCOLN.  19 


people,  without  respect  to  State  lines,  demands.  No  such 
reproach,  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  lies  at  the  door  of  Massa- 
chusetts. The  President  of  the  United  States  has  said,  not 
once  but  many  times,  that  if  every  State  had  adopted  cor- 
poration and  railroad  laws  like  those  of  Massachusetts 
there  would  have  been  no  need  of  much  of  that  nationa 
railroad  legislation  which  he  has  advised  and  which  has 
been  largely  enacted.  He  has  also  said,  in  regard  to  our 
laws  relating  to  health,  that  if  every  State  had  the  same 
system  there  would  have  been  but  little  need  of  the  pure 
food  act.  There  are  other  States  which  have  a  record  like 
that  of  Massachusetts  in  these  directions,  but  there  are 
many  which  have  not.  The  result  of  this  neglect,  and  of 
local  selfishness,  has  been  national  legislation  and  a  great 
extension  of  the  national  power,  brought  on  directly  either 
by  the  failure  of  the  States  to  act,  or  by  thrusting  State 
interests  and  State  rights  across  the  path  of  progress. 

Take  another  and  far  more  serious  phase  of  this  same 
question.  We  can  deal  with  foreign  nations  only  through 
the  United  States.  By  the  Constitution  a  treaty  is  the 
supreme  law  of  the  land.  No  State  can  make  a  treaty, 
and  yet  a  treaty  is  worthless  if  any  State  in  the  Union 
can  disregard  it  at  pleasure.  The  people  of  the  United 
States  will  not  long  suffer  their  foreign  relations  to  be  im- 
periled,  or  permit   the   peace  of  the   country   to   be   put   in 


20  ABRAHAM    LINCOLN. 

jeopardy,  because  some  one  State  does  not  choose  to  sub- 
mit to  the  action  of  the  general  government  in  a  matter 
with  which  the  general  government  alone  can  deal.  They 
will  not  permit  a  Legislature  or  a  city  council  to  disregard 
treaties  and  endanger  our  relations  with  other  countries. 
Those  who  force  State  rights  into  our  foreign  relations  will 
eventually  bring  on  a  situation  from  which  those  rights  will 
emerge  as  broken  and  discredited  as  they  did  from  the 
civil  war.  They  were  the  enemy,  powerful  in  their  in- 
fluence upon  the  minds  of  men,  with  which  Lincoln  grap- 
pled, and  which  he  finally  overthrew.  The  danger  to  the 
rights  of  States  does  not  arise  now,  any  more  than  it 
did  in  1861,  from  the  incursions  of  the  national  government 
but  from  the  follies  of  those  who  try  to  use  them  as  a 
cover  for  resistance  to  the  general  government  in  the 
execution  of  the  duties  committed  to  it.  Congress  alone 
can  declare  war.  The  President  and  the  Senate  alone  can 
make  peace.  It  is  not  to  be  tolerated  that  one  or  two 
States  shall  assert  the  power  to  force  the  country  into  war 
to  gratify  their  own  prejudices.  Their  rights  will  be  pro- 
tected by  the  general  government  sedulously  and  fearlessly, 
but  if  they  venture  to  usurp  or  to  deride  the  national  au- 
thority they  will  be  forced  to  yield  to  the  power  of  the 
Union,  and  the  State  rights  which  they  have  wrongly  in- 
voked, and  their  indifference  to  the  interests  of  the  nation. 


ABRAHAM    LINCOLN.  21 

will  meet  the  punishment  they  deserve.  The  day  has 
passed  when  one  State,  or  a  few  States,  could  interfere 
with  the  government  of  the  Union  in  its  own  field.  Lin- 
coln smote  down  that  baleful  theory  when  he  crushed  se- 
cession and  saved  the  Union.  But  if  we  are  wise  it  is  to 
the  States  themselves  that  we  ought  to  look  for  the  preser- 
vation of  the  rights  of  the  States,  which  are  so  essential  to 
our  system  of  government,  and  the  States  can  preserve 
their  rights  only  by  doing  their  duty  individually  in  regard 
to  measures  with  which  the  welfare  of  the  people  of  all  the 
States  is  bound  up,  and  by  not  seeking  to  thwart  the  gen- 
eral government  in  the  performance  of  the  high  functions 
entrusted  to  it  by  the  Constitution.  If  the  advocates  of 
the  extreme  doctrines  of  State  rights  use  them  not  for 
the  protection  of  local  self-government,  but  to  promote 
selfish  interests  hostile  to  the  general  welfare,  or  still  more 
to  embarrass  and  paralyze  the  national  government  in 
the  performance  of  the  duties  for  which  it  was  created, 
the  people  will  not  endure  it,  and  State  rights  will  be 
unduly  weakened  if  not  swept  away,  —  a  result  greatly 
to  be   deplored. 

In  the  civil  war  the  fighting  champions  of  State  rights 
bound  them  up  with  the  cause  of  slavery,  which  was  not 
only  an  evil  and  a  wrong,  but  which  was  a  gross  anachro- 
nism, —  a  stumbling  block  in  the  onward  march  of  the  Re- 


22  ABRAHAM    LINCOLN. 


public.  They  and  their  alUes,  the  copperheads,  the  south- 
ern sympathizers  and  the  timid  commerciahsm  of  the 
north,  proclaimed  that  they  were  conservatives,  and  de- 
nounced Lincoln  as  a  revolutionist.  "Radical,"  "black 
republican,"  "tyrant"  were  among  the  mildest  of  the 
epithets  they  heaped  upon  him.  Yet  the  reality  was  the 
exact  reverse  of  this.  Lincoln  was  the  true  conservative, 
and  he  gave  his  life  to  preserve  and  construct,  not  to 
change  and  destroy. 

The  men  who  sought  to  rend  the  Union  asunder  in  order 
to  shelter  slavery  beneath  State  rights,  the  reactionaries 
who  set  themselves  against  the  march  of  human  liberty, 
were  the  real  revolutionists.  Lincoln's  policy  was  to  secure 
progress  and  right  by  the  limitation  and  extinction  of  slav- 
ery, but  his  mission  was  to  preserve  and  maintain  the 
Union.  He  sought  to  save  and  to  create,  not  to  destroy, 
and  yet  he  wrought  at  the  same  time  the  greatest  reform 
ever  accomplished  in  the  history  of  the  nation.  Let  us 
learn  from  him  that  reaction  is  not  conservatism,  and  that 
violent  change  and  the  abandonment  of  the  traditions  and 
the  principles  which  have  made  us  great  is  not  progress, 
but  revolution  and  confusion. 

One  word  upon  one  other  text  and  I  have  done.  In 
August,  1864,  Lincoln  one  morning  asked  his  Cabinet  to 
sign  their  names  on  the  back  of  a  sealed  and  folded  paper. 


ABRAHAM    LINCOLN.  23 

After  the  election,  in  the  following  November,  he  opened 
the  paper  in  the  presence  of  his  Cabinet,  and  these  words 
were  found  written  therein:  — 

Executive  Mansion, 
Washington,  D.  C,  Aug.  23,   1864. 

This  morning,  as  for  some  days  past,  it  seems  exceedingly  probable  that 
this  administration  will  not  be  re-elected.  Then  it  will  be  my  duty  to  so  co- 
operate with  the  President-elect  as  to  save  the  Union  between  the  election 
and  the  inauguration,  as  he  will  have  secured  his  election  on  such  ground  that 

he  cannot  possibly  save  it  afterward. 

A.  Lincoln. 

Was  there  ever  a  nobler  patriotism  shown  by  any  man 
than  is  contained  in  those  few  lines?  What  utter  forget- 
fulness  of  self,  what  devotion  to  the  country  do  they  re- 
veal. Then,  as  at  the  beginning,  we  see  him  driving 
straight  forward  to  his  one  mighty  purpose,  —  the  salvation 
of  the  Union.  No  criticism,  no  personal  or  party  defeat, 
nothing  could  change  that  great  intent.  There,  indeed,  is 
a  lesson  to  be  learned  and  to  be  repeated  from  day  to 
day.  We  none  of  us  can  be  an  Abraham  Lincoln,  but  we 
all  can  try  to  follow  in  his  footsteps.  If  we  do  so  the 
country  will  rise  to  ever  new  heights,  as  he  would  fain 
have  had  it. 

That  nation  has  not  lived  in  vain  which  has  given  to 
the  world  Washington  and  Lincoln,  the  best  great  men  and 
the  greatest  good  men  whom  history  can  show.     But  if  we 


24  ABRAHAM    LINCOLN. 


content  ourselves  with  eulogy  and  neglect  the  teaching  of 
their  lives  we  are  unworthy  of  the  heritage  they  have  left 
us.  To  us  they  offer  lofty  ideals  to  which  we  may  not, 
perhaps  cannot,  attain,  but  it  is  only  by  aiming  at  ideals 
which  are  never  reached  that  the  great  victories  on  earth 
are  won.  Yet  when  all  is  said  it  is  not  Lincoln's  patient 
wisdom,  his  undaunted  courage,  his  large  abilities  that 
should  really  sink  deepest  into  our  hearts  and  minds  to- 
day. Touch,  if  you  can,  as  he  touched,  the  "mystic 
chords  of  memory."  Think  of  that  noble  character,  that 
unwearied  devotion  to  his  country,  that  gentle  heart  which 
went  out  in  sympathy  to  all  his  people.  No  one  can  re- 
call all  this  and  not  feel  that  he  is  lifted  up  and  made 
better.  Remember  him  as  he  lay  dying,  having  offered  up 
the  last  great  sacrifice  on  the  altar  of  his  country.  Then, 
indeed,  you  feel  his  greatness,  and  you  cry  out,  in  the 
words  of  Bunyan:  — 

So  Valiant-for-Truth  passed  over  and  all  the  trumpets  sounded  for  him  on 
the  other  side. 


^.T  H 


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